Welcome to the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning
Wolverine and the X-Men is a Marvel comic series, written by Jason Aaron, that began in 2011, running for 42 issues (December, 2011-April, 2014).
After the events of Schism tore Wolverine and Cyclops apart, Wolverine left the mutant island of Utopia to return to the ruins of the school in Westchester. Taking several of the X-Men with him to act as teachers for new students, Wolverine rebuilt the school, with himself and Kitty Pryde as the heads. He named it The Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, as both a homage to (the yet again deceased) Jean Grey as well as a huge middle finger to Scott Summers.
The series switches between a focus on a handful of the teachers (Wolverine, Kitty Pryde, Beast, Iceman, Rachel Grey, later Storm) and the students. The main cast of students includes:
- Quentin Quire (Kid Omega): A telepathic (and occasionally telekinetic) little shit with a very well Hidden Heart of Gold. He's also responsible for kicking off the actual Schism.
- Evan Sabahnur (Genesis): A clone of the supervillain Apocalypse, and innocent Farm Boy.
- Idie Okonkwo (Oya): A innocent girl from Nigeria with the ability to control temperature.
- Broo: An Innocent Prodigy, and part of the usually mindless parasitic Brood race.
- Kubark (Kid Gladiator): Shi'ar Prince, son of Gladiator, and admitted punch-aholic.
Joining after Avengers vs. X-Men:
- Iara Dos Santos (Shark Girl): An Ineffectual Loner from Brazil who, as her name suggests, is a wereshark (both her title and her real first name, as Iara is a mermaid from Brazilian Folklore).
- Trevor Hawkins (Eye Boy): Woke up one day covered in eyes, which he wasn't particularly impressed by either.
- Jia Jing (Sprite): A girl from Beijing with crystal skin and wings.
Kade Killgore, a psychopathic 12 year old, leads the newly revitalized Hellfire Club (who are also largely children), and is the main villain of the series. Basically everything that happens ever is his fault (with the exception of Avengers vs. X-Men).
The first series ended, replaced by a new series with the same name in March of 2014. The second series ended in December 2014 and relaunched as Spider-Man and the X-Men, in which Peter Parker is asked to join the Jean Grey School as councilor as one of Wolverine's last wishes following his death.
Not to be confused with the TV series based on the X-Men franchise.
The 2011 series provides examples of:
- Academy of Adventure: The series in a nutshell.
- Academy of Evil: The Hellfire Academy, with Headmaster Sabretooth to make it clear.
- A Day in the Limelight: Issue #41 was one for Toad. Highlighting his fall back into villainy.
- Almighty Janitor: Toad doesn't stand out much, but he has a plethora of experience and is the only one who can properly clean the school.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Like his father, Kid Gladiator has purple skin.
- And I Must Scream/Fate Worse than Death: At the end of the Hellfire Saga, Kade Kilgore is trapped inside the Siege Perilous as it sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
- Artifact of Doom: The Siege Perilous has been retconned into an always full size magic mirror that transforms people that pass through for vaguely implied sinister reasons. Very unlike the supernatural form of witness protection it first appeared as.
- Attention Whore:
- Oh, Quentin. The motivation to actually join the first battle at the school? None of the other students had heard of him.
- Kade Killgore could also count, though he does know when to lay low when he's drawn too much attention.
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil: The Hellfire Club tried this on Quentin in Issue 32. It failed.
- Born Unlucky: Trevor
- Bound and Gagged: Not exclusive to this series, but Quentin gets tied up a lot.
- Call-Back: Quentin Quire, while attacking the New Charles Xavier School with telepathic Wolverine Claws, says he's the best he is at what he does, "Isn't it oh so pretty?"; his Black Bug Room even showed up before that. He does it wearing a shirt depicting Wolverine in his Patch disguise that says Cyclops was right.
- Casual Kink: Warbird is into some...interesting stuff.
- The Chew Toy: Trevor and Toad.
- Class Clown: Quentin.
- Class Trip: A recent arc involved the main students taking a field trip to the Savage Land.
- The Jean Grey School website
has an entire list of special events including field trips to places like Asgard, Stark Industries, and "Headmaster Logan's 'favorite sushi joint in the whole Eastern hemisphere'".
- The Jean Grey School website
- Crazy-Prepared: Manuel and Maximillion attempt to kill Kade Kilgore in the final chapter of the Hellfire Saga, but fail when their guns' lasers veer away from their target. Kade reveals that since their guns were made by Kilgore Arms, they are fitted with failsafes that prevent them from harming him.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Toad managed to take down Sauron and Mondo with ease to free Quentin.
- Deadpan Snarker: Quentin again. Even under torture.
- Distaff Counterpart: Mondo of the Hellfire Academy is aptly described by Quentin as "Mojo with boobs."
- Enfant Terrible: The Hellfire Club has had a recent hostile takeover by a group of sociopathic child geniuses that manipulated the Schism into happening and are trying their best to destroy the school.
- Everybody Hates Mathematics: Bobby literally teaches a class called "Algebra Sucks: I Know, But You Still Have To Learn It"
- Face–Heel Turn: Husk defects to the Hellfire Academy. Although is is attributed to her apparent molting problem ever since the book started as it is part of a Secondary Mutation.
- Glob goes over to the Hellfire Club during the Savage Lands trip.
- So do Idie and Quentin in Issue #29 and 30. Although both of them have different reasons. In Idie's case, it's so she can kill whoever shot Broo and in Quentin's case the instructors automatically assume he's a traitor at the first sign, given he's got a very rebellious nature. He uses it to his advantage to go help Idie.
- Toad gets kicked out of Wolverine's School because of the Hellfire Incident and now works with Frankenstein.
- Fan Disservice: Idie, a 14-year-old girl, dressing up as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club.◊
- Forced into Evil: The Hellfire Academy student Tin Man has no interest in being evil, but is forced to take classes with the rest of the recruits, and even made into a member of the new Hellions.
- Full-Frontal Assault: A class/activities list has Warbird propose this as an art class (that is, draw her naked while she's trying to kill you). Wolverine notes he'd like a demonstration.
- Fun T-Shirt: Quentin Quire wears them on occassion.
- Future Badass: Everyone but especially Eye-Boy who goes on to become Eye-Man, who directs actions of both X-Men and Avengers from a floating sentinel's head in space and capable of Free-Fall Fight from orbit with science vampires. Did we mention his guns? Future Badass indeed.
- Good Feels Good: Quentin reflects on this following the fall of the Hellfire Academy.
- 'Heh. So that's how it feels to be a good guy. Not bad. Better than always losing, that's for sure.'
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Iara has some serious anger management issues.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Toad goes from villain to working for the X-Men to betraying them for Hellfire and now looking to go back. In the end this is cemented in Issue #41 as he regretfully leaves behind Husk and goes back to being a villain while stating I Am What I Am.
- High-School Dance: What high school series would be complete without a school dance to celebrate before the probable end of the world?
- Hormone-Addled Teenager: In Issue #33: Big Bad Kade Kilgore succumbs to puberty at the most inopportune moment possible after getting Idie into the Black Queen outfit.
- Hot Teacher: Kind of comes with the territory.
- I Am a Monster: Idie says this a lot. Justified because Idie lived in a very conservative village in Africa before the X-Men found her. She was raised to believe that all mutants are abominations in the eyes of God. This is also why she can be lethally ruthless in battle. She figures she's a monster, and damned, already, so she can't make anything worse by acting the part.
- I Am What I Am: Why Toad breaks things off with Paige and goes with Frankenstein, because one day she'd see him for what he really was.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Maria Hill comes off as being paranoid and unrepentant in issue #38, but just about everything she said is true. She has been taking steps with liaison officer Dazzler, but neither of the X-Men teams work with her; the X-Men fight each other more than enemies, they make Death Is Cheap, they violate the rules of Time Travel, and one of their own who had gone rogue did pull the trigger on the weapons they had and caused a hell of a lot of problems. Their only argument is about SHIELD having Sentinels, which being the director is something she should have control over and investigate.
- Laser Blade: Following his resurrection in 2012, Angel gained new energy powers. In issue #20 (January, 2013), he manifests an energy sword and has a brief Sword Fight with the second Silver Samurai. He bests his opponent.
- Magikarp Power: Trevor
- Me's a Crowd: A new ability Iceman develops. He's able to form multiple copies of himself, each sharing the same consciousness, from the looks of it.
- Mischief for Punishment: Xavier points out that getting detention isn't really a punishment for Quentin so much as it is a cry for attention, and punishes him by nominating him for class president instead.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Toad is working for the Hellfire Club, partly because of this and the other half is because he's Defecting for Love.
- Nasal Weapon: The Hellfire Academy student Snot has this as a superpower; he first discovered his powers when he sneezed and killed a walrus.
- Nerds Love Tough Schoolwork: Broo at least before he gets shot.
- New Transfer Student:
- Iara, Jia and Trevor
- During Avengers vs. X-Men, a bunch of the students from Utopia came to the school too.
- In a way, Broo and Kubark probably count too, since they're aliens.
- Out of Focus: Several of the adult X-Men who came with Wolverine to Westchester only make a handful of appearances, usually in crowd scenes. This is lampshaded in #19's Terrible Interviewees Montage; Chamber is among those interviewed over an opening in the school's faculty, leading him to ask "Don't I already work here?"
- Punch-Clock Villain: A group of Hellfire Club soldiers Rachel mentally interrogates are revealed to be working for the Club because they need the money to support their families (except for one, who just likes "seeing muties die").
- The Quincy Punk: Quentin fits this trope pretty well, although there's a lot more to him than that.
- Readings Blew Up the Scale: In a space casino some suspicious employees try and get a read off Quentin with a telepath detecting worm. The readings off the omega-level telepath makes it soil itself before dying.
- Rebellious Spirit: Quentin
- Royal Brat: Kubark fits this to a T.
- Sanity Slippage: Husk's Face–Heel Turn is implied to be because of her molting problem having an effect on her sanity. At the Hellfire Academy she's the lunch lady and the librarian and spends all her time screaming at the students while ripping off her skin. She even considers her shedding a priority at this point and wonders how long before she'll shed down to her soul. This is later revealed to be a secondary mutation as her molting also affects her mind.
- Sequel Series: The series is basically the next step in Wolverine's very long character arc by Jason Aaron, where he's attempting to genuinely be a good person after the events of his solo ongoing.
- Shout-Out: During the X-Men's assault on the Hellfire Academy, Iceman pilots a giant mecha made out of ice which resembles Voltron.
- Carrying over from the one set up in X-Force Evan looks into a magic mirror that shows his desires for the future and he's a pastiche of Superman, complete with a shout out to his first appearance in Action Comics.
- Future Badass Idie's updo has been explicitly described in character design notes as being inspired by Janelle Monáe.
- Design notes refer to Evan in his Bad Future Apocalypse persona as 2Pacalypse.
- Quentin has a few in the funny t-shirts he wears. Mostly in pun-form.
- When Firestar is interviewed for a teaching position she gushes about wanting to meet Iceman.
- The Spartan Way: The Shi'ar Boarding Academy appears to be like this.
- Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Quentin makes a Psychic Shotgun and a pair of Handguns in contrast to Psylocke and Pixie's blades. Rachel goes with an ax and sword combo.
- Student–Master Team: Wolverine and Quentin, when they went to Planet Sin.
- Student Council President: Quentin Quire was elected president, surprising approximately zero readers (although the circumstances were a little less predictable).
- Superhero School: Run by the X-Men's resident badass.
- Take That, Critics!: The book has a rather mean-spirited one after the AVX tie-ins end, with Doop attacking a Nun who's criticizing the school, citing one issue that people have criticized the book over (making Wolverine the headmaster, despite him being the absolute worst candidate for that role), then one argument that almost no one has said (Kitty teaching calculus...which shouldn't surprise anyone given she used to be a Teen Genius), then starts to criticize Iceman before being shut up violently.
- Teen Genius: Quentin thinks ten million "brilliant" thoughts per second.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Husk's secondary mutation makes her mentally unstable at first, because now her mind changes along with her physical body. She learns to exploit this near the end where she husks away her sad feelings over being stood up by Toad while counseling.
- Too Kinky to Torture: Quentin, when he's tortured by the Hellfire Academy.
- Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: During the Hellfire Saga, Quentin is thrown into the Siege Perilous, which rejects him. Philistine, the Siege's keeper, remarks that nothing like that has never happened before.
- Took a Level in Badass: Snot is pretty much pathetic until he's thrown into the Siege Perilous. He comes out as a musclebound brute with greatly enhanced powers.
- Tragic Hero: Potentially Evan and Idie.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: A big reason Wolverine decided to open the school was to stop the kids from being soldiers and having to kill.
- Villainous Breakdown: Kade Kilgore suffers one when the X-Men find and attack the Hellfire Academy.
- The Voiceless: Lord Deathstrike, one of the Hellfire Club's allies, never makes a sound, even while Wolverine is stabbing him.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Trevor.
- Young Entrepreneur: Kade Killgore. He set up a school for villains just so in the future he'd have more sentinels to sell.
The 2014 series provides examples of:
- Emo Teen: Quentin in the new series. He constantly broods over his perceived loss of identity and control, much to chagrin of some of the staff and students.
- Future Badass: Quentin is destined to become the Phoenix. Though as soon as he figures it out, he starts freaking out, acting out more than usual.
- Future Me Scares Me: Quentin dreads his future because he feels it's taking away his ability to make his own choices and decisions and be his own person.
- I Hate Past Me: His future self wasn't too friendly with him the second time they met.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Though Hellion does get aggressive towards Quentin in the first issue (in front of Storm no less), he does make a valid point when calling Quentin out for going too far in his tantrum stemming from his future and the teachers putting their faith in him. None of the other students know that they'll have anything related to as good a future as Quentin, let alone even pass their classes.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Quentin leaves after seeing his future self become evil.
